Native American group calls pipeline plan illegal

Friday

Jul 26, 2013 at 2:00 AM

A lawyer representing the New Jersey Sand Hill Band of Lenape and Cherokee Indians contends that the Tennessee Pipeline Co.'s plan to build 40 miles of a natural gas pipeline, including 10½ miles through Pike County, is illegal, based on treaties with Native Americans.

Jessica Cohen

A lawyer representing the New Jersey Sand Hill Band of Lenape and Cherokee Indians contends that the Tennessee Pipeline Co.'s plan to build 40 miles of a natural gas pipeline, including 10½ miles through Pike County, is illegal, based on treaties with Native Americans.

Attorney Arleen Richards sent the letter July 8 to Jacqueline Rocan, assistant general counsel for the Tennessee Pipeline Co. and to parent company Kinder Morgan.

The letter states that the company's Northeast Upgrade Project involving expansion of pipelines and compressor stations, violates treaties and laws, based on the tribe's longstanding rights to the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.

The letter gives the company until July 31 to reply.

The Sand Hills are descended from Lenape and Cherokee who intermarried in New Jersey during the 19th century. They have not been officially recognized as a legitimate indigenous nation by the federal government or by the states.

According to Richards' letter, "All ancient artifacts and potentially all natural resources underground and underwater and the land and water where they reside are the property of the Sand Hill Indians under the Treaty of Fort Pitt, based on the fraudulent Treaty of Easton, based on the Treaty of Ghent, the Uniform Commercial Code, the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, all other treaties with the Lenape Indians, and since time immemorial."

Laura Zucker, government liaison for the Sand Hill Band of Lenape and Cherokee Indians, said, "The Sand Hill Indians have legal title to the Delaware River, because in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware, the Delaware nation never gave up their rights. Other tribes signed treaties, but not the Delaware Indians."

Ronald Holloway, chairman of the Sand Hill Band of Lenape and Cherokee Indians, lives in Milford, Pa. He said the pipeline issue was brought to his attention by Delaware Riverkeeper Maya Van Rossum, Jolie DeFeis, founder of Air, Soil, Water, and Alex Lotorto, community activist.

"They were destroying valuable forest land and about to cross the Delaware River," Holloway said. "I met with Maya, who showed me maps and technical data from their case. I had our attorneys look at it, and they said we're in a position to stop it."

As chief, he says, "I must look seven generations ahead. The Delaware River is important for water for 20 million people and for the Delaware people to come home."

He says about 20,000 Delaware tribe members are scattered, with concentrations in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Canada and particularly Oklahoma, where many were sent to live on reservations, which he derides as "concentration camps."

Holloway was planning a "civic center" for the tribe, evaluating architectural drawings and discussing possible locations, when the pipeline issue emerged.

He said past attempts to claim tribal rights along the Delaware had failed because the U.S. "hid behind" sovereign immunity and the doctrine of discovery.

"The doctrine of discovery came from the church," he said. "It means that when you find land, it's yours. Like Columbus got lost and found America, even though many people were living here. That's like if you get lost on your way to Ohio, end up in New Jersey, get out of your car and claim New Jersey as yours."

Holloway says this legal claim is different from past efforts, because the Delaware is a navigable river, so the Sand Hill Indians can rely on admiralty law and international courts.

They base their claim largely on the Treaty of Fort Pitt, in 1775, which, in return for support in the Revolutionary War, guaranteed the tribe sovereign right to their land for a "14th state," at a time when the U.S. only had 13, says Holloway.

"Andrew Jackson ignored the treaty and moved the Cherokees and Delaware tribes, but the Cherokees won a suit in Supreme Court, giving them the right to keep their land," said Holloway. "The outcome was the Trail of Tears. Native Americans were marched by force from Virginia to Oklahoma, and 10,000 died. But the Sand Hills hid. Since 1710, they never left their homeland. Now we're prepared to bring 10,000 documents to court. We've spent years collecting them from libraries, private collections, archives, anthropologists and archaeologists."

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